With only one flounder in the cooler, it’s a good thing we could count on it for four fillets

Feeling the undulations of the sandy bottom telegraph up my graphite casting rod, I kept a cautious thumb on the reel spool. Our day drifting live bull minnows for summer flounder was starting slow. My son Harrison, his girlfriend Jerica and I had hoped to score enough fish for a family dinner. We hadn’t yet risen to the challenge.
The fishing boats we had encountered had all given us the thumbs down when we inquired as to their luck, so we had redoubled our efforts....

Do you think the only method of controlling weeds is mulching?
If so, you’re likely to add another layer of mulch every time you see weeds growing through the last layer. From there on, mulching becomes a habit.
Mulches control weeds by suffocation and by shading the soil, thus denying the weed seeds the red waves of sunlight. The red wave band of the sun’s spectrum stimulates weed seeds to ­germinate.
But...

Earth’s 23.5-degree axis gives us summer, winter and everything between

As evening twilight settles Thursday, look to the western horizon for the nascent crescent moon. Above it are Venus and Jupiter. The bright star Regulus is up there, too, forming a line with Venus and Jupiter, each roughly a dozen degrees from the next. Keep an eye on the two planets as they inch closer together over the next two weeks before a spectacular end-of-month conjunction when they are within one-third degree of one another.
Friday and Saturday the moon, Venus and...

Special Olympics athletes set their sights on the summer games in Los Angeles

Brandan Ehrmantraut of Prince Fredrick loves being part of Special Olympics. “It shows we aren’t different even with our disabilities,” the 20-year-old says. “We can compete like everyone else.”
Ehrmantraut and seven unified cheerleading teammates are journeying to Los Angeles later this summer to support and energize special athletes from around the world in the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games. They will be cheering on five of their...

From derelict ruins to still-active beacons, these fixtures of the water continue to light up the imagination

Chesapeake lighthouses have marked safe passage for sailors since the 1800s. Many stand still, reachable by land or water, and welcome your visit.
Turkey Point Lighthouse, built in 1833 near the head of the Bay, is the tallest — at 35 feet — of the 74 Chesapeake lighthouses. Located in Elk Neck State Park, it was built by noted Bay lighthouse builder John Donohoo.
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor claims the Seven Foot Knoll Light, 1855,...

Plants pretreated for insect resistance with neonicotinoids will no longer be on the shelves at Ace Hardware. That’s good news for any bees in the area. A relatively new class of pesticides, neonicotinoids have come under scrutiny as a possible cause of the collapse of honeybee colonies. The chemical pesticide targets an insect’s nervous system, causing paralysis. Bees are apparently as susceptible as pesky bugs.
Ace says that to protect pollinators it will be...

The Bay is being overrun by algae. Billions and billions of the tiny creatures are making life harder on the rest of the ecosystem. The three most common algae in the Bay have been blooming more frequently over the last 20 years, according to researchers at University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
Mahogany tide, formally known as Prorocentrum minimum, doubled its average number of annual blooms between 1991 and 2008.
The red algae...

48 Days of Blue made waves. By the time the National Aquarium campaign to protect the environment (started on Earth Day) concluded on June 8, World Oceans Day, it had proved that small changes can help to protect the oceans that cover 71 percent of the earth’s surface.
More than 3,700 eco-warriors completing the campaign’s daily challenges refused — hence never wasted — 29,486 pounds of plastic. That’s about the weight of seven American...

Too many species to count are losing their habitat as native plant communities disappear because of human land management changes and occupation by invasive species. Hundreds of native insects, including many solitary native bees and other critical pollinators, have already vanished.
Plants and animals connected to each other for various needs are called a web. Most plants, birds and insects are part of very specific food webs. Thus, the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly, the...